Monday, April 17, 2006

MY TOP 5 FAVOURITE MILKFACTORY MOMENTS

I recently listed my top 5 favourite milkfactory moments of the last six and a half years on the site's forum, but I thought it would be good to post them on here too... so here's how it goes:

1. Recieving an email from Mark Bell, of LFO fame, out of the blue just to say he liked the site, and me consequenlty asking him for an interview while thinking that someone was pulling my leg... and then meeting the man a few weeks later. He has to be the nicest guy on this planet!

2. Interviewing Broadcast in the beer garden of an empty pub in North London, not far away from the Warp offices. Tim and James helped me out with a temperamental minidisc player, and then all three of them had lunch while we were chatting about their career, work and many other things. They were so patient and kind. The interview was supposed to last about 20 minutes, and we were still talking after an hour.

3. Having two albums landing on my desk by a band I'd never heard of... I remember playing one of the albums, thinking "what the fuck?..." taking it off, and then finding myself intrigued by it a few days later, playing it again and falling in love with this band almost instantaneously. The album was Campfire Songs, and the band was Animal Collective.

4. Interviewing Graham Massey. It happened a bit like the Mark Bell thing. Out of the blue, I got a very kind email about the site. Not believing that something like this was happening again, I asked him for an interview, he said yes, and when I got his answers back, with an apology from him for waffling on, it was just so fantastic because it was like reading a complete history of the Manchester scene of the late eighties, the Hacienda and about everything there was to know about 808 State.

5. Having my friend Nathalie, from Belgium, sending me a copy of Coppé's Peppermint album, which led to me plucking up the courage to get my first interview for the site, and started a very lovely friendship. I've never met her, but I am still hoping our paths will cross one day. There is one thing sweeter than sugar on Earth, and she is it!